Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Empty Victory? Not over for quite awhile

Now that Congress has "spoken", and the "law" is on the "books", we're supposed to line up and silently take our orders. Forget the chicanery, the sleazy side deals, forget the simple lack of constitutional legitimacy of the thing. It's on the books now, so we have to obey. So says seventy years of modern liberalism.

Needless to say, nothing of the sort is going to happen. This battle has only started. Obama has his bill? Indeed he does -- but along with it, he also has:

Well over half the populace infuriated by the bill and the methods used to push it through. (Poll numbers range from the mid-50s to the lower 60s, depending on how the questions are worded. The latest CNN poll puts opposition at 59%.)

Thirty-seven states considering laws forbidding the federal government from ordering their citizens to purchase health insurance. (Idaho has already passed such a provision.)

A raft of lawsuit filings,beginning yesterday, attacking the bill on virtually every level from funding to the "reconciliation" process. (What a misnomer that is!) Many are based on very substantial grounds, and some have an excellent chance before the bench.

A lengthy and convoluted series of actions that must be taken, beginning now, to assure that the provisions of the bill go into effect without breaking the budgetary barriers and revealing ObamaCare's actual costs. Many are as controversial and unpopular as the bill itself. Chief among these is cutting Medicare benefits, which must be done sometime in the next few months. Need I say more?

Obama's personal and party poll numbers falling through the floor, as the Democrats shed not only the voters attracted by Obama in 2008, but those who had drifted in over the eight years of the Bush presidency. Independents, Reagan Democrats, liberal Republicans, floaters... all gone. As of this Monday, CNN puts his disapproval rate at 51%. We'll see what seats the Dems can carry with the combined Move On/ACORN vote. (Well, it seems they can forget about the ACORN part too. You see how this works?)